OCTOBER 20, 1997:
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. With Mark
Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, Heather
Graham, John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Joanna Gleason. A New Line
Cinema release. At the Cheri.

Comparisons are invidious, but inescapable: Boogie Nights is the most
stunningly accomplished, attention-grabbing movie by a sophomore director since
Pulp Fiction. As impressive as Paul Thomas Anderson's first film, last
winter's little noir Hard Eight, was, it offered no warning of the
bravura achievement of Boogie Nights, a grand, comic epic about an
unlikely topic, the porn-film industry of the late '70s and early '80s.

From his jaw-dropping, GoodFellas-like opening tracking shot through a
disco (even more masterful camera work will come later throughout the picture),
set to the exuberant sounds of the Emotions' "Best of My Love," to his
pants-dropping, Raging Bull-like finale in the world-weary protagonist's
dressing room, Anderson dares to one-up Scorsese, Altman, Tarantino, and any
other film-geek icon you might name. He shares the ear of Scorsese and
Tarantino for pop and their stomach for pulpy violence and Altman's way of
using subcultures to satirize American life, but he has more empathy for his
characters, even the irredeemable ones, than most filmmakers do, and his
synthesis of narrative styles and formulas results in something original and
strangely wonderful.

Boogie Nights is the allegorical story of Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg),
a 17-year-old busboy who is, um, endowed with a gift that takes him to the top
of the porn heap. Discovered by porn auteur Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) and
rechristened Dirk Diggler, Eddie is the favorite son in Horner's ad hoc family,
including the maternal Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), big-brotherly Reed
Rothchild (John C. Reilly), and sisterlike Rollergirl (Heather Graham), who
never takes off her skates, even during sex. All serve Horner's dream, in the
heady days when porn movies like Deep Throat and Behind the Green
Door are winning over mainstream audiences, to make fuck films that are
artistic. He's no more an artist than Ed Wood (as shown in a hilarious sequence
about the shooting of a Horner opus), but as long as his movies make money, the
cocaine and the jacuzzi bubbles flow, and the occasional casualties of too much
fun can be ignored.

Rather less fun, the second half of the film chronicles the decline of
Horner's dream and his stable. With the turn of the '80s, home video puts porn
theaters out of business, and the cheaper new medium has Horner churning out
crass porn flicks like sausages. Amber bonds more desperately with her
soundstage kids as she loses all ties to her real child. Rollergirl explodes in
pent-up resentment, as a fan discovers that his fantasy isn't all it's cracked
up to be. And the heretofore sweet and naive Dirk lets success and drugs go to
his head. He spirals down to the gutter, reaching his hellish nadir during a
botched robbery at the home of a coke-fried drug dealer (Alfred Molina), in the
most memorable of the movie's many comic-horrific set pieces (made more
terrifying by the use of Night Ranger's awful power ballad "Sister Christian").
The bill for '70s hedonism comes due, but vice doesn't disappear; it merely
stops flaunting itself in public, preferring to hide discreetly in the living
room.

Anderson presents the '70s as the decade saw itself, without irony. His
actors, especially Wahlberg, Reynolds, and Moore, wear straight faces and carry
themselves with enormous dignity. (You've already heard it many times, but it's
true: this is a star-making performance for the artist formerly known as Marky
Mark, and a career-reviving one for Reynolds.) Like the cringe-worthy costumes
and production design (even more dead-on and wince-inducing than for the Brady
Bunch movies), the characters are unashamed of their tacky tastes and desires.
Only when they discover shame and guilt are they cast out of paradise. Anderson
tells both sides of the story with equal virtuosity and without flinching or
moralizing. If there is any lesson in Boogie Nights, it may be that
there is still pleasure to be had in giving yourself over to a dazzling
storyteller.

Porn stars
- Another review of Boogie Nights from this week's Chicago NewCity